Pros: More powerful and more storage space than Power Mac G5. Low price next to PC rivals.

Cons: No native Adobe, Autodesk or NewTek software yet.

Our Rating: We rate this 8 out of 10

The release of the Mac Pro completes Apple’s move to Intel’s processors, blowing the Last Post for the company’s long-serving PowerPC-based workstations. The Mac Pro is more than a G5 with a new processor though, it’s a powerful system that offers something not usually associated with Apple – value.

With Intel Inside, comparing the Mac Pro to the latest generation of Windows workstations is no longer about power. Using many of the same components as equivalent models from the likes of Dell and HP, the Mac Pro doesn’t offer any higher performance – but it offers it at a much lower price.

The originally confusing choice of Intel processors has been born out as the right choice, as our head-to-head review of the latest Xeons against the even newer AMD Opterons in Digit 104 proves. The Mac Pro also works out a lot less expensive – and a lot more powerful – than the Quad Power Mac G5, which began at just under £2,000.